


you know i didn't want to have to haunt you (look at how my tears ricochet)

by thisismetrying



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Heavy Angst, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon, me to me: you can have a new WIP as a treat, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 11:21:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30071481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisismetrying/pseuds/thisismetrying
Summary: The boy looks to the man, his father, who has now reached them, and is staring at the woman now. The boy is not good with reading facial expressions, but he has always been good at feeling emotions. He feels as if he is caught in the middle of a thunderstorm, with no umbrella and without his raincoat. He does not like lightning, the way it is quick and unpredictable and can burn something to the ground in one strike.He sees the woman’s throat move, forming a gulp. “Is that…?” she says, though the boy does not understand why she asks it as a question or why she is repeating herself, because it is just two words, not even a sentence.The man shakes his head and runs his long fingers through his hair, disturbing it even more. “Yes,” Benny Watts tells Elizabeth Harmon. “That is your son.”-or Beth and Benny and a little boy in 1979
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Comments: 13
Kudos: 39





	you know i didn't want to have to haunt you (look at how my tears ricochet)

**Author's Note:**

> if you see me starting a new WIP while I already have so many (and YES i do have a plan for this one), no you don't
> 
> Anyway, I've been listening to angsty songs and have been depressed for the past few days and this is the product of it. Be prepared for heavy angst and an unreliable update schedule. 
> 
> Title and chapter titles from Taylor Swift's "My Tears Ricochet"

**_Present Day - 1979_ **

The boy has strawberry blonde hair and is stick skinny. He hovers at the edge of the crowd for most of the game, watching with brown eyes, watching as the players move the pieces back and forth. It fascinates him, how professional chess works. The timers and the careful observers, who move pieces on a big board so the rest of the crowd can see. The people who gather to watch, breath held. The steady tick of the hands of clock, punched every few minutes.

He likes the quiet, the hush that falls over the room as everyone stares intently on each player, trying to guess their next move. He likes the energy in the room, the way the focus is directed at the black and white squares of the chess board, the most important thing in the room.

He’d tried to get there early, to get a seat (he doesn’t like standing for long periods of time), but the room had already been packed even though he’d arrived 15 minutes before the match was set to start, according to the watch he always wears on his wrist.

But the room had already been packed, with every reporter at the tournament taking up the chairs and the more well-prepared chess players who had the foresight to arrive even earlier. The boy had resigned himself to settle for the fringes of the doorway, until even more people had jammed their way into the room already bursting at capacity, pushing him into the wall. Which is how he ended quite close to the front (or really, the back) of the room, smushed between a chair and an emergency exit sign.

The boy watches as white, an older man with salt-and-pepper hair plays a Petrov defense opening. _Hoping for a draw,_ the boy thinks. He briefly flashes back to his game books, stacked neatly on his bookshelf at home: page 94, Petrov’s defense, and recalls the book describing it as “your plain, steady, workman type opening.” He himself wouldn’t use it, but from the program he read, he recognizes that this man has a 1750 rating and doesn’t hold much of a hope against his opponent any way.

Black, a woman with shoulder-length red hair, smiles as she picks her chin up from a cradle formed by the back of her hands. She leads them into a Stafford Gambit. The move is daring, bold, aggressive, downright stupid, some would say but she does not seem nervous or bothered. She moves the pieces with precision and confidence that her opponent tries to mirror, only for the shake in his hands to be apparent even to the boy from the back of the room.

The game is over in 12 moves. When the man sticks out his hand, the woman takes it gracefully, her mouth revealing the faintest hint of the smile. The man nods his head and shakes the woman’s hand gracefully, but anyone can see the bitterness in the man’s face. _Serves him right for accepting,_ the boy thinks.

The lightbulbs of cameras go off and suddenly the boy wants to get out of there. He does not like the noise, the flashing and the clicking, the whirl of recorders as the man in a suit next to him says into a little box, “Harmon wins against M. Smith in 12 moves. This marks Harmon’s first match stateside in nine years. Harmon recently lost the World Championship title to Georgi Girev after holding it for six years.” The boy wants to leave, but he is in an absolute pin against the wall. So he closes his eyes and pictures endgames, reciting lines from _Basic Chess Endings_.

Eventually the crowd thins, and the boy can move again. There is a smattering of reporters and others still in the room. The man, white, is gone, off to replay the game through the night. The woman, elegant in ivory slacks and a green blouse, stands off to the side of the table where she just demolished her opponent, talking to a man with a large camera who is scribbling down her words.

The boy goes to move, to get back to his room before he’s found out. But as he’s walking out, eyes facing toward his shoes with perfectly tied laces, he catches a glimpse of the chess board. He had only been able to watch, his head twisted in a quite an uncomfortable position actually, the observers move the pieces on the board. He hadn’t gotten to see the actual board, and his curiosity gets the better of him. He lets his feet lead him to the board, where he promises to take a quick picture, which he will dissect later on.

He only means to take a snapshot and then be on his way, but something about the pieces pull him in. This chess set, he thinks, must be new. There are no worn scratches on it, the indents of fingernails where a player gripped too hard, or scuff marks on the board from years and years of play. Instead, this board glistens and glows, humming a siren song to the boy.

He must stay there for a while, or enough time, that the woman in white and green appears in his field of vision. For a moment he’s scared, he has the impulse to run, but his feet don’t seem to want to listen to his mind and he scolds them for that.

The woman scrutinizes him for a second, almost as if he is a pawn, and she is deciding how to open with him. But it only lasts a second, and then she pulls her mouth into a smile. The boy is struck, unsure what to do. He knows this woman, or at least knows who she is. She is Elizabeth Harmon, former World Chess Champion. He has seen her picture in his many chess books, but it is always in black and white and she never smiles in those pictures. The woman before him seems a little less scary, maybe because she is smiling or her red hair adds warmth to her.

“Do you know how to play?” she asks him. The boy is surprised by the question. Responses like _of course_ and _who doesn’t?_ circle his mind but he does not like talking very much, so he nods his head instead.

Elizabeth Harmon crouches so she is on eye level with him. “I see,” she says. “And what did you think of the game?”

The boy doesn’t like to talk, but he will talk about chess and before he really processes it, words are flowing out of his mouth. “White shouldn’t have accepted the Stafford Gambit. He fell into too many traps,” the boy starts, and then he is listing off every mistake white made. When he is finished, he adds, “It could have gone badly, for black, for you too.”

At first he is afraid that he has insulted the woman, the way her face contorts a little. But he has never been good at reading facial expressions and so he stays frozen until the woman laughs. “You’re right,” she says. “But I had a plan for that too,” she says, and he feels like he is being clued in on a secret. “Would you like to see?” she asks him, and she is already moving to reset the board, to show him.

He watches, intent on the moving pieces, how the woman’s fingers move them so carefully and elegantly, with a grace and calmness he can never manage, that he doesn’t notice the man quickly approaching them from across the room until he hears his name called out.

“Alexander!” the man, who wears a black coat that billows behind him, yells. The boy can’t read faces very well, but he knows this expression and the way the man’s face is shaped with his eyes narrowed and his mouth set in a line, tells him that the boy that he is not happy.

The man approaches him and the woman, and the boy notices that his face is red and his hair is out of place. The woman turns around at the sound of the man’s voice, and the boy is in just the right position between the two to see that her eyes widen and her mouth drops. The man’s face also drops, into something dark that makes the boy’s stomach curl. The woman looks back to him, her expression still the same, with her mouth open and her eyes even wider than a second ago.

The boy does not know what is going on and he is confused.

The woman no longer addresses the boy, but instead the man. “Is that…” she asks, her voice strained, not at all like the easy manner she had with him moments ago. She cannot seem to finish, to conjure up even a weak endgame for her sentence.

The boy looks to the man, his father, who has now reached them, and is staring at the woman now. The boy is not good with reading facial expressions, but he has always been good at feeling emotions. He feels as if he is caught in the middle of a thunderstorm, with no umbrella and without his raincoat. He does not like lightning, the way it is quick and unpredictable and can burn something to the ground in one strike.

He sees the woman’s throat move, forming a gulp. “Is that…?” she says, though the boy does not understand why she asks it as a question or why she is repeating herself, because it is just two words, not even a sentence.

The man shakes his head and runs his long fingers through his hair, disturbing it even more. “Yes,” Benny Watts tells Elizabeth Harmon. “That is your son.”

**Author's Note:**

> Like I said, I have literally no excuses for publishing another WIP. Also, I apologize if you actually know chess, I tried my best. 
> 
> If it helps, I do have a plan for this fic, along with the ending already in mind. When I will fully write it out, is beyond me. I meant for this plot bunny to just be a long one-shot, but then realized there is SO much here to explore. 
> 
> Also, yes I know this is trope-y and self-indulgent as hell, I'm just rolling with it at this point. I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments though, especially as the fic goes on, about what you think about the characters and their actions!
> 
> Thanks to the B2 Discord for lots of discussion on the themes (to come) of this fic! Join here: https://discord.gg/pVtbfUxx


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